


Believing What You Know Ain't So

by executrix



Series: Sequel to Lead Apes in Hell [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 14:53:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha and her girlfriend have something in common.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Believing What You Know Ain't So

1.  
There are few aspects of the Mormon lifestyle that Tony Stark has espoused uncritically, but a weekly Games Night has his endorsement.

Buffy’s apartment sublet in Frankfurt fell through, so she’s still in New York living out of a suitcase and whatever one can buy in New York City. Translation: she would be living out of four suitcases if she didn’t have indefinite permission to hang her clothes in one of the Stark Tower guest rooms in a sort of Superhero Affiliate Program.

At first Buffy made a point of being out on Games Night, but the prospect of Boggle sucked her in. She’s still at the gateway and firmly does not play Twister. 

“Natasha’s bringing her girlfriend,” Tony says. “Some chick named Vera.”

“Is that going to be a security problem?” Phil asks. 

“Don’t be paranoid, sweetcheeks,” Tony says. “I mean, you died already, what worse is going to happen?”

“I don’t want,” Phil says, at the same time as Buffy says, “He wouldn’t want,” and they finish almost in unison, “To do it again.” 

Tony says “Hi” as Natasha walks through the door with a taller brunette who Tony thinks is adequately good-looking but smoking hot, so he diagnoses some form of sociopathy. Well, that and because Natasha hardly ever bags any Junior Leaguers. 

Buffy shakes her head. It’s almost enough to make her believe in Fate. Or prophecies, or something.

“Hi, B,” Faith says. “Hey, didn’t the squirt just get married?”

There’s no point in taking the Fifth, so Buffy nods. 

Faith sticks out her hand to the nearest person. “Faith Lehane,” she says. “Retired Slayer.”

“I thought until the Changeover there was only one of you?” Bruce asks politely. 

Faith shrugs. “I was a redshirt. Walked on when B. was on deathternity leave. Hey, you’re Coulson, right? I heard that…”

Phil puts the teaspoon in the saucer of his Limoges coffee cup. “In our line of work, whatever kills you makes you stronger.” 

“B, he’s not a…?” Faith asks, taking a combat stance just in case. Buffy shakes her head, although nothing will ever make her really feel comfortable with Phil. He’s Clipboard Guy. If they sent around a memo that the perfect birthday present was locking a girl up with a crazy vampire, he’d do it. Cruciamentum Guy. 

“Pulled out fast, into cryo, stat double lung transplant,” Phil explains. Faith nods. She’s sure that their new surgeon could do it in a helicopter, during a hurricane, with a Dairy Queen spoon, so S.H.I.E.L.D., which has actual money, could certainly git ‘er done. Nor is it beyond her comprehension that a boss could offer the most inspiring version of facts. It wouldn’t be the first time they fridged their own guy.

Clint sits down at the chessboard and glances up hopefully. Faith sits down opposite him. “Got a clock?” she says. (Of course Tony has a chess clock, from Steuben Glass.) “I only play speed chess. Gets too long and boring otherwise.” She unzips her hoodie slightly and, to the fascination of most of the room, reaches into her fuchsia lace bra and pulls out a pack of gum. “Ledge? Anybody?”

Nobody except Natasha takes her up on her Sharing is Caring offer, so they start chewing Teaberry gum, in synch even though they’re facing in different directions. “Also, I learned to play in jail, y’know, lots of gals with poor impulse control.”

Clint fishes the clock out from under the chess table, sets it up, and courteously lets Faith play White. He starts the clock. Faith advances the rook’s pawn and mashes down the button. Clint blinks, trying to figure out why the hell anybody would open with *that.* Faith conspicuously twiddles her thumbs. 

Natasha, rolling her eyes, sits down at the round table with turntable in the middle. Nobody actually wants to play Monopoly with Tony, except, he sulks. Bruce and Pepper join them. 

Everybody has a pretty good idea of where Steve and Dawn are, and everyone’s just as glad when The Honeymooners don’t show up because it’s humiliating remembering what asshats they were when they were the ones who went around acting like they invented sex. 

“Jesus, Clint, it’s not a pool table,” Natasha says, but Clint won’t relinquish the chessboard. “Hey, Ledge, want me to beat him up?” Faith offers, but Natasha declines. Buffy takes over from Bruce on the Monopoly front, freeing up Bruce for the chessboard. Bruce plays black and spots Clint a pawn, but Clint knows he’s doomed. 

“Hey, how come you call Toshi “Ledge”? Aren’t those Russian things called sledges?” Phil asks. He turns over the little Boggle timer. Buffy blinks and her pencil immediately starts frantic scratching.  
A minute later, figuring she’s found as many words as she’s going to, and two of them are “cat” and “gat,” Faith shrugs. “About Commie public transportation, I got nothin’. It’s not ‘sledge,’ it’s ‘ledge.’ Like, ledger. What we’ve got in common, y’know? Ours doesn’t look too good. We’re the Lehman Brothers of morality. Nothin’ but red, but nobody ever bailed us out. We’re Payback’s bitches.”

Faith glances over at Natasha, who is leaning over the chessboard with her elbow on Clint’s shoulder. Faith tells herself that she’s not the jealous type, and immediately realizes that this is bullshit. It doesn’t matter how many toys you have when you’re 32, you still resent having to share your three-year-old self’s skimpy hoard. 

But she isn’t jealous of Clint no matter how many times he and Natasha screwed (which handily outnumbers the Faith/Angel tally of zero) because of the number of times that they saved each other. Faith doesn’t take life lessons, even “Math is Hard,” from Slayer Barbie. Not even after her Malibu Dream Hellmouth got re-zoned for This Never Happened. In contrast, Faith has learned a lot from Angel, her infinitely credible tutor in what it takes to get in front of everything you’ve done that you bitterly regret. Paying back at fractions of cents on the dollar.

2.  
It is unusual for the International Emergency Medical Legion not to be able to use any donation of money or supplies. Even counting the donations that the donors knew they were donating. However, those foam rubber bats are intended to be used in marriage counseling sessions, and *that* manages to fall beyond their remit. The friggin’ bats are really good for sparring, though. 

Faith thinks that Soviet super-soldier serum was about on a par with its automobiles, or, you’d wait on line for six hours and get half a dose of super-soldier serum and half a dose of serum that lets you read Outer Mongolian sheet music. Hence, Faith thinks Natasha is no match for a Slayer. Natasha thinks Faith is over-confident. 

They both think that if the foam rubber bat gets knocked out of your hands and you land on top of it just the right way, it’s pretty hot when your girlfriend dives on top of you and starts humping. Or if your girlfriend dives on top of you and starts humping and you have to figure out how to reach the weapon.

In the IEML, personal details are shared about as much as at AA meetings in Zen monasteries. Its members are there now, and that’s all that counts. The Legion can always use another pair of hands—they could always use another forty pairs of hands. Although obviously some of the people who come and go are spies for one or more sides or the others, anyone is welcome as long as they follow the rules:  
• Wear your dogtags, even if there’s enough of you left to bury, your head might not be all that close by  
• Don’t puke into the surgical field, and if you do you have to clean it up  
• Don’t steal the Fentanyl, that’s just trashy  
• Don’t claim Spirals unless they’re really yours, and you’re sure  
• Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, which applies to cigarettes except around oxygen tents, herb, booze if there is any. There usually is, their new mechanic can induce fermentation in anything.

The mechanic and her two buddies appeared out of nowhere, looking slightly shell-shocked. (The younger of the two women kept saying “I told you it was my turn!”) This is not unusual. The IEML has far too many clients who need everything from field amputations to emergency rations to tent housing to mosquito nets to bother about niceties like passports, licenses, or criminal records checks.

Faith concludes that whatever they were doing before, it wasn’t teaching at Beijing University. Faith thought they taught her a little Mandarin but whenever she tries to use it her accent cracks everybody up. Natasha’s accent in Russian, Ukranian, Chechen, and Polish is impeccable, but Faith is way too smart to repeat any helpful phrases offered by Natasha in those languages until she runs them past an unshockable Russian Orthodox priest of her acquaintance.

The mechanic is absolutely the most popular person in the Legion, and not just because of her warm, ebullient personality. Mostly it’s because everything they have from the tubing to the personnel is used, battered, and has plenty of broken places to be strong at, and she can fix anything. In the informal pecking order when it is necessary to leave a place in a hurry, she always gets the first seat in the first plane out. Followed by her pal the Ops manager, who passes for peculiar even in the IEML. Everybody listens to her now after what happened at the last three places she told them not to go. She’s also their best warlord-wrangler. 

The next seat goes to the dentist, because they are **never** going to find another dentist if they get this one killed. There are four—no, five—surgeons now, so it’s not that they’re not valuable, but they’re not irreplaceable. 

Faith knows that she would not have a particularly high priority in an evacuation, so it’s a good thing that she’s flying the plane.  
It takes a lot to freak out anybody who’s survived three weeks or so in the IEML (and who learned to check to see if someone swapped out the povidone iodine for the liquid soap in the solar shower—never not funny!). So now, ever since that thing where a bunch of vamps tried to jack the blood bags, there’s a little yellow sign stuck to the back window of the plane: “Slayer on Board.” Everybody’s a smartass.

3.  
The enhanced crew (Slayvengers? Aveyers?) are at a deli that’s been on the Lower East Side since Moses was a yeshiva-bocher. Faith has finished her corned beef sandwich. No one can believe it. It was about the size of the Tesseract, if less cosmically significant, and it just vanished like a french-dropped quarter. Faith has wiped her hands on about five napkins, so they’re free to dip below the table except when she’s stealing Natasha’s French fries. Natasha has a bowl of shocking pink borscht and is splitting a brisket sandwich on a club roll with Clint. She’s fine with PDAs, but eventually gets up to get Faith her own damn plate of French fries because enough is enough. Pepper is eating smoked sturgeon with cream cheese on a bagel, which always cracks Tony up. (Pepper thinks it would only be funny if she insisted on Wonder Bread being imported from the nearest bodega.) She’s also the only one who’ll drink Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Tonic. Tony is outside smoking a cigar. His plate of salami and eggs is getting cold.

“Yeah, I put on a little weight,” Faith says, patting her stomach. “It’ll come off when I’m back in the field, though. Always does.”

Buffy toys with the giant matzoh ball that fills up most of the soup cup. “What’ve you been doing, Faith?” Buffy realizes that she actually doesn’t know. She doesn’t follow #ActivatedSlayers or the Original Potentials Tumblr. Faith probably wouldn’t have posted anyway.

Faith and Natasha exchange a look. “Getaway driver,” Natasha says. Faith laughs and gives her a little punch on the shoulder. 

4.  
“You don’t have any ink,” Faith says.

“It’s not the most inconspicuous thing for a secret agent,” Natasha says. 

“Could be the cat’s ass,” Faith says. “I mean, nobody actually looks at your face…like anybody does look at your face when you’ve got THOSE…if you take their attention away with some kinda colorful hoo-hah. Or, you know, henna or those peel-off ones. Like, a gigantic bleeding heart on your cleavage? Or a big ol’ blue tiger on your shoulder?” She starts drawing suggestions with her fingertips, thinking of the wings spreading across Angel’s back.

“But why a spiral?” Natasha asks, nibbling at Faith’s ankle and moving up to numbers two through eight. It’s time for some au revoir sex, because Faith just got a text that they’re shipping out. It’s a cake run. A tsunami. There aren’t two sides both trying to kill them. People might even be glad to see them.

“Well, there was a minotaur in the middle of the labyrinth,” Faith said. “So, not so great. But also, not that I’d know personally, they told me that monasteries have mazes so the dudes can wind themselves up and meditate or whatever. Maybe there are secrets inside if you get to the center? Or it’s like the chocolate cherry with the stuff inside that looks like cum? What you find there in the middle could be good, could be bad, up to you. Instead of getting an earring if there was a shipwreck and you didn’t die, or a tattoo ‘cause you got divorced or you had cancer or something, we get a spiral inked whenever we save somebody’s life. It’s up to the guy what he does with it. Could be good, could be bad, not our problem. We just save ‘em and then they do their thing.”

Each day, some of them will pick up a scalpel and some of them will pick up the far-flung results of IED 5, Homo Sapiens 0. In the Legion, it’s one day at a time.


End file.
